Washington D.C., Mar 29, 2010 / 12:46 pm
In an article published on Monday, noted Catholic scholar George Weigel condemned the recent media treatment of Pope Benedict XVI, particularly by the New York Times, as part of a larger agenda to take “the Church down” and discredit its moral authority. Weigel also praised the Holy Father's “determination to root out” what the Pontiff previously called “filth in the Church.”
Weigel began his First Things article by arguing that the media has recently portrayed the Catholic Church as “the epicenter of the sexual abuse of the young,” when in fact, it is “by empirical measure, the safest environment for young people in America today.”
“According to other recent studies, 2 percent of sex abuse offenders were Catholic priests,” he asserted, “a phenomenon that spiked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s but seems to have virtually disappeared (six credible cases of clerical sexual abuse in 2009 were reported in the U.S. bishops’ annual audit, in a Church of some 65,000,000 members).”
Weigel argued that the media is not interested in these facts, however, and that the recent deluge concerning Pope Benedict is more “about taking the Church down – and, eventually, out, both financially and as a credible voice in the public debate over public policy.”
“For if the Church is a global criminal conspiracy of sexual abusers and their protectors,” he added, “then the Catholic Church has no claim to a place at the table of public moral argument.”